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LIST OF PROFESSOR VEITCH'S WORKS.

1850. Descartes' 'Discourse on Method.' Translated with an Introduction.

1853. Descartes' 'Meditations,' and Selections from 'The Principles of Philosophy.' Translated with

Notes and an Appendix.

1857. Memoir of Dugald Stewart.

1859-60. Sir William Hamilton's 'Lectures on Metaphysics' and 'Lectures on Logic.' Edited conjointly with Dean Mansel. Four volumes.

1864. Speculative Philosophy: an Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Glasgow.

1869. Memoir of Sir William Hamilton.

1872. Hillside Rhymes.

1875. The Tweed and other Poems.

1875. Lucretius and the Atomic Theory.

1877. The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border. (Out of print.)

1879. Descartes' 'Method,' 'Meditations,' and Selections

from The Principles of Philosophy.' Trans

lated with a new Introduction, Appendix, and Notes. (Now in its tenth edition.)

1879. Hamilton:

Series.

1884. Hamilton

Blackwood's Philosophical Classics

the Man and His Philosophy: two Lectures delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution.

1885. Institutes of Logic.

1886. The Theism of Wordsworth: Transactions of the Wordsworth Society. (Wordsworthiana, 1889.) 1887. The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry. Two volumes.

1889. Merlin and other Poems.

1889. Knowing and Being. Essays in Philosophy. First

Series.

1893. The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border. (New and greatly enlarged Edition.) Two volumes.

1895. Dualism and Monism; History, and the History of Philosophy; The Theism of Wordsworth. Essays in Philosophy. Second Series.

(In preparation.)

Border Essays, with a Memoir and

Portrait.

INTRODUCTION.

PROFESSOR VEITCH'S POSITION IN PHILOSOPHY.

UNIQUE though his strong personality was, Professor Veitch's life presents none of those dramatic incidents, so called, which are calculated to startle or arrest the general public. He was a pure scholar and thinker, singularly devoid of craving either for fame or for any of the more solid rewards that sometimes fall to the lot of men of high intellectual attainments. Diffident in temperament, when not aroused by a sense of duty, and essentially shy-a feature which was concealed, as with many similarly constituted, by a certain brusqueness of manner-his services to his university, to his colleagues and others, and to several public associations, have not become known as they otherwise might. It was sufficient

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for him, to take an example, that the exceptionally valuable library of his master, Sir William Hamilton, should pass into the safe keeping of Glasgow University, without any special recognition or record of his part in the transference. No doubt it was better thus. For, although many details which might redound to his credit are consequently awanting, the interest of his life concentrates itself upon his position as what one may term ultimus Scotorum.

A Borderer by birth and by affectionately nurtured lifelong association, entirely Scotch by academic training, Mr Veitch had been fitted beyond most to appreciate the conditions and requirements of a Scottish philosophical professorship. "The interest and eagerness of the Scotch student," he writes, "the large class, the sympathy of numbers, the readiness for hard thought, and the disinterestedness of feeling, are the elements on which the Professor is privileged to work. He has the opportunity, simply by the character of his prelections from the chair, of quickening and inspiring his students in philosophical studies, and giving them a connected, comprehensive, and systematic view of his depart

ment-such as can be accomplished equally well under no other arrangement. If he fail to do this, the fault is his own." His sense of the

value of this arrangement in the past was the secret of his untiring hostility to any but the most circumspectly considered changes. From his own experience of it also arose his deep feeling for the personnel of his classes. Few could have felt more sympathetically for the students. In his own life he had learned their varied and peculiar difficulties-their frequent poverty, their occasional lack of preparation, their sometimes misdirected zeal. Yearning is the word which best conveys his attitude. And thus it was that, in spite of the undoubted unpopularity of the philosophy which he taught, there was no one to whom, in later life, former pupils more readily turned when they stood in need either of material assistance or of advice. Within the class-room his teaching, partly on account of its extremely critical character, did not exercise dominating influence. But, after they had gone out from the artificially restricted academic sphere and had battled with the world for a time, those who had heard him were quick to acknowledge his chasten

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